Sibley, Iowa — The Sibley Fire Department was called out twice on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020.
Sibley Fire Chief Kenny Huls says the first call was to what started out as a controlled burn of CRP ground at 140th Street and Olive Avenue, three miles north of Sibley’s west edge. He says the grass fire continued into the ditch and burned three utility poles owned by Osceola Rural Electric Cooperative.
Huls says the coop was called to check on the poles, but they appeared to only be burned superficially. He tells us they were on the scene of that fire for about a half an hour.
Then later, about 3:25 that afternoon, the Sibley firefighters were paged to 110th and Oak Hill Avenue for a vehicle and field fire. That’s a mile west and about six miles north of Sibley.
He says they discovered that a farmer had been loading round corn stalk bales, and just the exhaust pipe or muffler of his pickup must have been hot enough to ignite old dry corn leaves under the pickup. He says the farmer tried to move it but quickly discovered that the right rear tire had blown due to the fire. He says the farmer patted out the fire with one of the pickup’s floor mats, and it was basically out when the fire department arrived.
